Electric car battery technology set to charge into homes

3 March 2015By Ergon Energy

New battery technology being developed by
prestige sports car manufacturer Tesla looks set to revolutionise the domestic
power storage market.

Speaking at his company's quarterly earnings
report recently, US-based Tesla Motors CEO Elon Musk said plans to develop and sell
lithium-ion batteries for use in homes and businesses were progressing well.

"We're going to unveil the Tesla home battery, or the sort of consumer battery that will be for use in people's houses or businesses fairly soon. We have the design done and it should go into production probably in about six months or so. It's really great, I'm really excited about it," Musk said.

Speculation in the battery industry is that Tesla's battery design and capacity will overtake Japanese car manufacturer Nissan's Leaf battery technology. Currently the Leaf batteries can be detached from electric vehicles and used to power homes.

Similarly, owners of Toyota's hydrogen fuel cell-powered Mirai car can remove the batteries from their vehicles and provide enough energy to power an average home for about a week.

While battery market watchers anticipate that Tesla's battery capacity will outpace Toyota's, questions remain over the details of the Tesla's functionality and whether recharging would require a Tesla Supercharger station or simply a domestic electricity socket.

Despite those questions, financial market observers scrutinising the domestic energy storage market are about as excited with the Tesla news as Musk is.

US-based financial services company, Morgan Stanley estimates that by 2028, Tesla's fleet of cars owned in the US will have an energy storage capacity of 237 gigawatts. That's equal to 22 per cent of total US electricity production capacity and also approximately 10 times larger than current
US network storage capacity.

Tesla is collaborating closely with US utilities with its home battery technology. There is growing interest by US utilities in the technology with the vast majority of them already in talks with Tesla.

While the use of domestic batteries will assist home owners in selling excess energy back to electricity companies, market watchers say it is unlikely to result in a mass exodus of electricity customers from the grid. However, Tesla appears set to take pole position in the hotly contested race to dominate
the domestic energy storage market.